LibGuides: Grants and Funding Guide: NIH Public Access Policy

NIH Public Access Policy

On April 7, 2008, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) made public access mandatory for all peer-reviewed articles arising from NIH-funded research. These articles must be submitted to PubMed Central (PMC) upon acceptance by a publisher. The number assigned to each article upon submission to PMC (i.e., the PMCID) must be cited when submitting an application, proposal, or progress report to the NIH.

This page was created to help UT Southwestern affiliates understand their obligations as NIH-funded researchers and includes a variety of Web resources that can help with comprehending and complying with the policy, instruction sheets for particular steps of the compliance process, and general handouts.

NIH Public Access Policy Official site from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) describing the policy. Includes FAQs, background information, submission details, training materials, and the text of the final NIH policy.

PMC (PubMed Central) This link opens in a new window A free digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), developed and managed by NIH's National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) in the National Library of Medicine (NLM). Participation by publishers in PMC (PubMed Central) is voluntary, although participating journals must meet certain editorial standards. Although immediate free access to all content is most desirable, a journal may delay release of its full text in PMC for some period of time after publication.

Converting PMIDs to PMCIDs (UT Southwestern Library) Outlines steps for converting PubMed reference numbers (PMIDs) to PubMed Central reference numbers (PMCIDs) during the article submission process to comply with the NIH Public Access Policy guidelines.

Web Resources

How to Provide a Missing PMCID (UT Southwestern Library) Explains how to get a PMCID (PubMed Central reference number) assigned to a non-compliant, NIH-funded journal article.
Journals That Submit Articles to PMC A list of the journals that submit articles directly to PMC (PubMed Central) on behalf of their authors. If you publish in one of these journals, no further action is needed to comply with the submission requirement of NIH Public Access Policy. If a journal is not listed here and your work falls under the NIH Public Access Policy, you will need to check with the publisher to make sure you will be able to comply with submission requirements.
Linking eRA Commons with My NCBI (UT Southwestern Library) Explains how to link an eRA Commons account to a My NCBI account to manage researcher bibliographies for NIH grants. Also describes how to delegate the responsibility of updating bibliographies to an assistant.
Managing NIH Public Access Compliance with My Bibliography (UT Southwestern Library) Explains how to add researcher publications to the "My Bibliography" section of "My NCBI" and to verify the author's compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy. This process replaces bibliography management on eRA Commons.
NIH Public Access and NIH Manuscript Submission -- Useful Resources & Tools
NIH Manuscript Submission System (NIHMS) Articles are submitted to PubMed Central through the NIHMS System. Each article only needs to be submitted once. Submissions may be made by authors or non-authors with access to the appropriate information.
PMID : PMCID Converter (NCBI) If an article is in PubMed and in Pubmed Central (PMC), it will have both a PubMed ID (PMID) and a PMC ID. Use this online converter to translate one type of ID to the other. Multiple articles can be converted at the same time.
SHERPA RoMEO: Publisher Copyright Policies & Self-Archiving This site may be used to find a summary of permissions that are normally given as part of each publisher's copyright transfer agreement. Please verify the summaries are accurate and up-to-date before submitting an article to PubMed Central.

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NIH Public Access Policy

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